Mangalore: For Priyanka’s family, the horror begins to sink in

DHNS

• ‘My most horrific dream couldn’t conjure my child being sacrificed’

 

Mangalore, 19 December 2010: When little Priyanka Jha could not be traced till late Thursday night, her mother Anjali, though worried, nursed hope of her survival as she thought that Priyanka would have been sold or kidnapped.

 

 

“I thought that we would get her back within a day or two, with the help of police,” she said and added that she couldn’t even think in her most horrific dreams that her daughter would be sacrificed. Three-and-half-year-old daughter was allegedly sacrificed by her neighbour Kamalaksha Purusha (72), brother of her landlord, Madhava.

 

When this correspondent visited the grieving family on Saturday, Priyanka’s elder brother Pankaj (6) was playing with his neighbour and younger sibling Neeraj (one-and-a-half-year-old) nestled in his mother’s lap. The family as well as the villagers are yet to come out of shock.

 

Priyanka’s father, Firan Kumar Jha, who is working for a private appliance firm here for the last eight years, was consoling his wife. In fact, he brought his wife and children to Mangalore just two months ago from Bihar.

 

Anjali learnt about her daughter’s fate only on Friday night, just before Priyanka’s body was taken for post mortem.

 

Prior warning

 

Firan said he had asked his wife not to send Priyanka to Kamalaksha’s house as his neighbours had told him about the suspicious behaviour of Kamalaksha.

 

 

“How can I refuse when she (Chandrakala) pesters and takes away my daughter? After all, she is my neighbour. Can anybody think that this would happen,” said Anjali amid sobs.

 

Asked whether she would return to Bihar, she replies with tears in her eyes: “With what face can I go back? What will I tell my parents, in-laws and grandparents?” Robert D’Souza (75), a neighbour, recalled how Kamalaksha hid the body of a woman (Chandrakala’s mother) for three days after she died, more than 10 years ago.

 

“He (Kamalaksha) buried the body near his house after stench started emanating from the house,” he said.

 

Though the police took him to the station, he returned within a day, he added. “Had the police taken action then, this little kid (Priyanka) would have survived,” he said.

 

Judicial custody

 

Though Kamalaksha Purusha and Chandrakala (24) were arrested on Friday, Madhava was arrested after Chandrakala told the police that he too was present when the girl was sacrificed. All the three were charged under Section 302 (murder) and produced before the court on Saturday which remanded them in judicial custody for 15 days.

 

Child panel report

 

District Child Welfare Committee chairman Asha Nayak on Saturday visited the spot where Priyanka was sacrificed.

 

Although the issue does not come under her jurisdiction, she will submit a detailed report on the incident to the Karnataka State Commission for the Protection of Child Rights within a day, as a child is involved in the case, Nayak said.

 

Kadri police have seized 12 motorcycles belonging to the group which threw stones at the police station demanding that Kamalaksha and Chandrakala be handed over to them.

 

“We have shot a video of the entire incident. We will arrest all the culprits soon,” said Kadri Inspector Niranjan Raje Urs.

 

SHRC seeks report

 

The Karnataka State Human Rights Commission on Saturday sought a report from the police on the death of Priyanka, reports DHNS from Bangalore.

 

The Commission registered a suo motu case against the alleged human sacrifice and sent notices to the Dakshina Kannada Superintendent of Police and other authorities seeking an immediate report on the incident.

 

SHRC chairman S R Nayak said he would decide on the action to be taken after receiving reports from police and district authorities.